Flin Flon city council has formally responded to requests it pursue cottage country annexation and take further steps to more evenly distribute the municipal tax load.
At a council meeting last month, concerned citizen Tom Heine encouraged council to pursue annexation to grow Flin Flon’s tax base. Separately, Bruce Reid called for more tax parity among homeowners.
At Tuesday’s council meeting, Coun. Colleen McKee read a prepared statement from council about the men’s presentations and the discussion that ensued.
“Finding ways that permit surrounding cottage areas to join constructively in the project of ensuring
Flin Flon’s existing and future infrastructure and operational needs, has been explored in a variety of ways in the past,” she said. “At this point, Flin Flon’s strategy is to try to engage the province as an intermediary and legal representative of these areas. …At this point, our council agrees that the best approach seems to be to let the process take its course before attempting any other approaches.”
The statement said the city takes “very seriously” the “challenge of preparing for a future that may be less focused on mining,” and has joined with neighbouring communities to hire an economic development officer in Perry Trusty.
“Economic development programs from various levels of government are actively being sought,” McKee added, reading from the statement.
Building for the future, the statement said, will mean trying to retain
Flin Flon’s current population.
“We’re all very cognizant of that,” McKee said. “As such, we continue our efforts to make our population, especially our seniors, want to stay here by continuing to invest in Flin Flon’s unique quality of life. We support facilities and programs to offer social, sporting and cultural activities of all kinds, and work constantly with community partners, like different sports groups, like the Flin Flon Bombers, the arts groups, like the museum and the arts council, to help their events and programs flourish.”
After she finished reading the statement, McKee said that when it comes to unorganized territories such as cottage subdivisions, no representative body is currently
in place.
She said the idea of “pitting neighbours against neighbours” is “contrary to what we’re trying to do, when we’re trying to bring people together. We are going to be facing huge challenges, and we need to do it together.”
